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The Tender Ready Programme

John Hudson — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 12:06:17 +0000

The Tender Ready Programme

Tendering can be quite daunting, especially if you have never responded or even seen what a tender looks like.

The first stages of tendering are crucial in ensuring that you get it right, and this is part of what we call being “Tender Ready”.

Indeed, before you even decide on a contract to bid for, there are a few things that you can have prepared in advance that will make your life much easier when it comes to developing tenders.

We have provided our Top 4 things that you need to consider when being Tender Ready:

1 – Experience & Technical Capabilities

Firstly, buyers need to see the past experience of your delivery.

To provide the buyer with confidence in your ability to undergo the work involved, you need to demonstrate you can actually deliver the work you’re bidding for, by providing thorough, detailed and robust examples of where you have delivered similar work in the past.

Be organised and prepare at least three good case studies for each service you offer, detailing the timescale and value, achievements, outcomes, challenges and lessons learned.

For more information about writing a great case study, click here to see our “Case studies” video via Tender VLE.

2 – Policies & Procedures

Secondly, make sure your organisation possesses the relevant policies and procedures, in which you actively implement and use every single day. This may vary depending on the sector, but the most important ones consist of the following:

Health and Safety policy
Equality and Diversity policy
Quality Policy
Environmental Policy
Customer Service / Complaints policy etc.

For more information about policies and procedures, click here to visit Tender VLE.

3 – Organisational Structure

Thirdly, we recommend you have a clear team structure with a chain of command, clearly defined roles and responsibilities and deputising and reporting procedures.

Using an organogram, or organisation chart can be a useful, simple and visually appealing way of presenting your organisational structure to the buyer that lets them see who does what and who manages each area.

Such information can be backed up by detailed and clear team profiles and CVs. Click here for more information.

4 – Boilerplate Responses & Generic Content

Fourthly, it is a great idea to have a bank of pre-prepared “boilerplate responses” – templates for responses to questions or topics which often come up, or which can be reasonably anticipated.

These save you precious time and resources, meaning your work on a given response might only be a few tweaks here and there to tailor it to the question being asked, allowing you to divert your energies to more specific, technical and in-depth questions.

Being Tender Ready involves demonstrating to buyers that you understand how your organisation operates, what it is you offer, your resources, experience and your ethos.

It’s hard to convince a buyer to choose you if it looks like you yourself don’t know what you’re talking about and you have multiple inconsistencies across your brand, as well as having little to no evidence of previous delivery.

Getting the necessary information together and producing high-quality literature that is detailed and clear is a mammoth task, but an important first step.

Here at Tender Consultants, we are here to help you SUCCEED.

If you’re feeling confused by the tendering process, daunted, or are needing that all important first step in the right direction, then our Tender Ready service is the one for you!

What is the Tender Ready programme?

Our Tender Ready service ensures that you have winning resources in place when you begin bidding for contracts.

The service includes:

Professional Tender Portfolio development.
Basic tender knowledge support.
Expert advice regarding the opportunities that you should be bidding for based on your companies economic financial standing.
Content production of the most frequently requested tender documentation including company policies, team profiles and internal procedures.
Case study development and tender response advice.
Once this content is developed you are ready to tender! But our bid support doesn’t end there. As part of the Tender Ready service, you will also be entitled to a review of your first two bids OR our tender experts will write your first bid on your behalf, using the documents we have created.

Get in touch today and start your tender journey.

Find more helpful tips and advice in our blogs. We cover topics including:

The post The Tender Ready Programme appeared first on Tender Consultants.

The importance of RELEVANT Case Studies when tendering

John Hudson — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:13:15 +0000

How can case studies change your tendering game?

Tenders these days (especially in the public sector) are extremely structured in that they all feature the same legality clauses and requests, based upon EU legislation and procurement law. One other majorly structured trait to a tender and something the buyer definitely wants to know is how you’ve delivered your services in the past!

The age-old question of – “Please provide 3 examples which demonstrate your technical capability in the market” – is now something of common request in national tenders. And rightly so! Of course, buyers want to know who you currently work with, how much work you’ve done and what great results your company boasts, as they need to make sure you have undergone scopes of work, similar to what they are procuring. Experience is key to winning every contract and as part of our writing tutorials at Hudson Succeed, we always state that evidence is needed to back up the majority of the responses. Usually, this evidence comes from your experience. This makes the buyer/evaluator feel at complete ease, knowing you have completed something similar before.

We are not saying that you shouldn’t bid for work you haven’t delivered before (especially if you’re a new business), as you may have better tools, better ideas and more cost-effective solutions at your disposal that other businesses (with experience) lack. It’s all about assessing the relevancy of your experience and using this to benefit the contract at hand. This is where case studies will support your tendering efforts going forward.

A few Do’s and Don’ts to building case studies include:

DO – get in touch with your current clients and ask for testimonials – these can be added to support a strong case for why the buyer should choose you;
e.g. The CEO of ‘Company X’ has stated we are “an impeccable & efficient company, who has not only delivered the most engaging content with brochures but has supported our marketing efforts overall”;

DON’T – just pick a client and submit ‘static’ material already developed – always make sure you adapt your content and client to align with the specified requirements of the buyer – ensure similar scope, nature and size is used every time, where possible;
e.g. if you need to supply 500 brochures to a hospital, the buyer probably won’t care if you supplied 5 to a retail store previously- this is way different in size AND scope;

DO – use the STAR format when developing your Case Studies to clearly outline the Situation (brief context), Task (the work you faced), Action (what you’ve done) and Results (what were the results etc.);
e.g. this helps to break down each case study – you may do this several times depending on the requirements within the tender – but it is a very good start to show the buyer/evaluator what needed to be done, what & how it was done, along with success rates and statistics outlining benefits/improvements to the client.

This will be one of the most important elements you use as part of your tender process and almost 99% of Stage 1/PQQ submissions nowadays have the experience and/or contract example requests embedded.

We encourage you to start working on your case studies as soon as your contract with a client begins, so you can at least get the basic information gathered using the STAR format and then adapt these case studies to align with future buyer’s requirements as part of tenders! This can help you write a winning bid when tendering for contracts.

Need further help? CLICK HERE to get in touch with our bid writers and let us help you grow, develop and stand out!

Need assistance when writing your next bids and tenders?

Now you’re a bit more familiar with what’s required, you may be looking for some writing support. Writing isn’t everyone’s strong suit and that’s ok. Outsourcing a bid you’ve found to bid writing specialists can help you secure that next contract.

Here at Hudson Succeed, we pride ourselves on being bid writing experts. We hold an 87% success rate and have over 60 years of collective bid writing experience. We offer four levels of bid writing support to suit every business need. You may not need the whole bid written for you; you may simply need it proofread before you submit. We can help with that. Our services include:

Tender Writing

Once you’ve found the perfect bid for your business, send it our way. Our Bid Writers can take care of the whole thing for you they’ll even submit it on your behalf. They’ll let you know what they need from you, providing you with a full Tender Writing breakdown.

Tender Ready

Our Tender Ready 4-week programme is perfect for businesses that have never tendered before. A Bid Writer will work with you to ensure you have everything in place to tender successfully. Tender Ready offers your business:

A 12-month subscription to one Hudson Discover
Access to Global Bid Directors and Senior Bidding Professionals.
An Organisation-wide Bid library, including 3 case studies, 5 CVs and policies.
Additional flexible benefits.

Tender Improvement

If you’ve been tendering but aren’t seeing success from your current efforts, our Tender Improvement package can help. Our Bid Team will assess your previous responses and tender documents. They will work with you to improve for future submissions. This package includes a 12-month subscription to a Hudson Discover portal and additional tendering development services.

Tender Mentor

If you’ve written your own tender response and need it double-checked for errors, Tender Mentor can help. A Bid Writer will proofread your work for any inconsistencies, grammar, or spelling mistakes. They will also ensure it’s in line with the specification before you submit. This is a great way of improving your skills and understanding of how to polish your tender.

Discover Elite

Upgrading to Discover Elite can help optimise your tendering efforts – even when you’re busy. Our two new time-saving tools can improve your competitor awareness and success rate when bidding for a contract.

The Ultimate Time Saver package offers your business:

A maximum of five tender breakdowns per month.
An annual subscription to a maximum of two Hudson Discover sector-specific portals. This option can help businesses that overlap two industries such as Healthcare and Technology, for example.
Pre-market and award engagement notices monitored on your behalf.
Buyer portal management, including registration, password management, downloading documents and assessing viability based on your bid or no-bid strategy.
Weekly phone calls with your dedicated Account Manager to discuss viable tendering opportunities.

The Become a Pre-Bid Master package also includes:

All of the above.
Up to seven tender breakdowns per month.
A Bid Strategy delivered by a Senior Bid Manager with a minimum of 5 years of experience. It will also be managed by our Global Bid Director.

Find more helpful tips and advice in our blogs. We cover topics including:

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